DENVER (KDVR) — Negotiations between President Joe Biden and Republicans over the American Jobs Plan have reached a stalemate, but supporters of the plan’s investment in electric vehicle infrastructure remain optimistic.
President Biden’s American Jobs Plan includes investing $174 billion in electric vehicle infrastructure. If passed, it would encourage companies to expand production of electric vehicles, offer tax incentives for Americans who purchase electric cars and build a network of 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations across the U.S.
Protect Our Winters, a Boulder-based nonprofit focused on climate change, is throwing its support behind this investment in electric vehicle infrastructure. Protect Our Winters was founded by professional snowboarder Jeremy Jones in 2007. Since then, it has focused on targeting the source of the problem to produce systemic solutions to climate change.
Arielle Gold, a Steamboat Springs native and Olympic medalist, works as a volunteer athlete for Protect Our Winter. She said revolutionizing the transportation sector will greatly reduce greenhouse gases. According to data from the Environmental Protection Agency, the transportation sector is the biggest contributor to greenhouse gases in the US.
“The goal here is to support the American Jobs Plan. The idea is in order to implement more of these environmentally-friendly approaches to transportation, it starts with trying to build the appropriate infrastructure and that’s something we don’t quite have yet. The goal through the American Jobs plan is to create better infrastructure that will cater more to these renewable resources for energy and in doing so is also going to create a lot of jobs,” said Gold.
Gold said adding 500,000 charging stations around the U.S. will encourage more people to go electric.
“We obviously have a lot of charging stations around Colorado that make it generally accessible to travel but I know that’s something that people share concerns about when it comes to electric vehicles — the mileage, how far you can travel. I think in further building the infrastructure to support that as well as trying to provide more options for people to get these cars affordably, I think that’s the biggest thing,” said Gold.
The status of the American Jobs Plan is now up in the air. Talks between GOP leaders and President Biden stalled Tuesday night as the two sides remain at odds over what qualifies as infrastructure and should be included in the deal.